With due respect to Ram Lal Anand College, I think there’s a very serious problem somewhere if our children need 100 per cent marks to get into their esteemed B Tech (Computer Science) Course.

Curious to know about India’s answer to MIT, I visited this college’s website only to be told, and I cut-paste the English in original, “This Website is being Design & is Under Maintenance Currently.”

To the college’s credit, some links were working, so I went for the page talking about this great course which expects our children to have 100 per cent.

Three short paragraphs describe what’s on offer. And how many teachers did I see? Five, in all, and if you’ve clicked the link, two of them seem to be on study leave!

That said, I empathise with what Vijay Sharma, the poor principal of this Delhi college, as also other principals who are copying what the venerable Shri Ram College of Commerce controversially did in 2011.

Such is the large-heartedness of examination boards dotting our country that hundreds of kids can show up with mark sheets stating 99 per cent in the XII standard exam and you, as a principal, are rule-bound to grant them admission.

So, rather than have a riot outside your college, the principal Sharma at Ram Lal seems to have floated the safest ‘first’ list in the world: a cut off of 100 per cent!

Once things calm down, and surely there won’t be a class full of 100 percenters in Ram Lal College, Sharma will open the supply lines with a ‘second’ or even ‘third’ list.

Meanwhile, irrespective of what B Tech (Comp Science) students will learn from three teachers in his college, it doesn’t harm to have the accompanying publicity!

The annual ordeal for my friends and their bright children hoping to study in, arguably, the best university in India, has its roots in fierce competition among India’s boards authorized to conduct Class XII examinations. Move over Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). There are 41 others, as this list of 42 which Delhi University accepts for its cut off lists will tell you.

Some of these boards are a racket. Their chairmen are political stooges of the chief ministers concerned and their mandate is: a) increase the pass percentage, even if that means lowering the bar each year; b) increase the marks of the topper; so if the chap has already got a 100, give cent-per-cent to a dozen others; c) ensure that not a single child from that board is at a “disadvantage” vis-à-vis children from the remaining 41 school examination boards.

The competitive populism and ruin is for all to see. A child I know with a 94 per cent aggregate in CBSE (Humanities stream at that) is running around with a very limited hand. Another child with 93.5, again from CBSE, may ultimately have to study in Hong Kong. Such is the steep fall after 4-5 top DU colleges, she would rather go overseas where one of the best centres for historical studies is waiting to admit her.

This isn’t to say that CBSE is a paragon of frugality, but the largesse of marks handed out by many others is an outright scandal. Hint: West Bengal alone has five school examination boards!

Quick questions:

1) Are we rolling out an army of conceited 100 per centers who have basically mastered the art of cracking objective-type marking schemes? Are their analytical skills worthy of such marks? Are they capable of expressing and understanding complex ideas beyond 140 characters? If so, how do we plan to distinguish among 100 per centers!

2) How long before centers of learning like Harvard, Oxford, or Singapore, start making fun of our exams? India’s dismal rank of 72 (out of 73 participating countries) in the Programme for International Students Assessment-PISA is an early warning on that.

3) Given sharp variances in the standards of various colleges with Delhi University and the demand-supply gap in various courses, is the said army of children being boxed into courses that they do not want or have any aptitude in? If so, is that a responsible way to handle their future?

4) Are MM Pallam Raju, the human resource development minister, and his ministerial colleague Shashi Tharoor, himself a brilliant DU alumnus, ready to engage with chief ministers and chairpersons of the 42 boards of education, to counsel them out of this collective ruin?

5) Should we start a migration towards percentiles instead of percentages? Distinguished educationist Kavita A Sharma, quoted in these columns last year, has been a votary for this. Dr Sharma rightly wants universities other than DU to pull up their socks too and to eschew regional quotas for examination boards in their own states. She also believes that colleges should try and go deeper than basic marks in Class XII. “If only marks count, we don’t need admissions committees; we only need computers!” she quips.

6) Finally, as ministers and chief ministers, parents and principals abdicate their responsibility in controlling this deluge, is there hope for my two friends who scored 94 and 93 per cent? I think there is as I read the public message of Valason Thampu, the St Stephen’s principal. “The fact that you have not been shortlisted for the interview casts no reflection on your merit or the promise you hold. I am inclined to think that marks do not hold a faithful mirror to the true potential of a student. But, the College has, alas, no other criterion to go by at the present time. I intend to seek credible alternatives in the days ahead to the excessive dependence on Class 12 marks. I am sure that you will find good enough opportunities to pursue your higher education elsewhere and I wish you the best for the years ahead. Perhaps your not making the cut could prove –who knows?- the wind under your wings. I pray it does. May it spur you on to higher levels of effort and excellence.”

As post script, may I flag that there’s a tribe of irresponsible parents and school principals who do not push their children to score in Class XII? The duo gang up to let our children get away with minimal attendance in their Classes XI-XII and look the other way while students concurrently enroll in informal sweat shops in Kota, etc, ignoring their basic school education.

The focus here is on cracking the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for the Indian Institutes of Technology. If the board exam encourages rote learning, the desperation for IIT has equally cruel outcomes; cruelly weaning away thousands of our children from the wonders of the humanities, moral science and civics, to the treacheries of the JEE Exam.

Wish we hear more from Pallam Raju and Tharoor, if not Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, on this Himalyan Tsunami awaiting India’s famed demographic dividend. Sorry, proud parents of 100 per centers, if I’m sounding like a wet blanket or a party pooper.